Havoc level 34, Relay Station. Premade team of True Survivors. We’re in the area heading towards the first door. We identified the Hexbound Daemonhost around the corner, and opted to safely clear, set up on the second story, and wait for a pause in hordes. This allowed us to drop right on the ritual with full CD’s and burn it down.
The moment we dropped in, ALL the following things spawned simultaneously (timing confirmed using SpecialsTracker addon):
Simply put, this is stupid. What’s the counterplay here? I genuinely want to know the strategy that Fatshark devs expect to employ that overcomes this challenge.
I am all for raising the bar on Havoc difficulty, and applaud the team for putting something together. Our Havoc team is making progress up the ladder – our 32 clear felt really good! – but each run right now has a distinct sense of uncontrolled luck/randomness that just feels frustrating. We’re not so much improving with each level, but re-rolling the Assignment until the Director opts not to run us over with a truck.
Adjustments I would put up for consideration:
Limits on the number and type of boss overlaps. The combo we saw should never happen. Max of three boss mobs active (twins count as 2). Twins or a captain, not both. In a group of 3, one boss should always be weak form, encouraging targeting strategy gameplay. Further limits on boss activation when hexbound ritual is active.
Reduce the number of garden buff mobs in a horde, and hard cap on number of Bulwarks with garden buff. Pincer groups with 4 garden mobs? Again, stupid.
Limit the proximity of Hexbound rituals to one another, and normal daemonhost spawns. Two rituals can activate together on either side of the Chasm Terminus bridge. Normal daemonhosts can spawn directly on top of rituals, forcing you to engage a Daemon.
Final Toll is overtuned for a “burndown” effect. By activating the effects at 50%, Havoc gameplay often develops such that mobs spend MORE than half their living time in the buffed state. I recommend one of the following: activate at 30%, remove CC immunity, or add a counterbalancing increase damage taken.
Would love to hear silly combos that others have experienced.
I was one of the 4; it was straight up the dumbest spawns I’ve ever experienced. Captain having heals + 3 other bosses, the ritual, and the rest of the horde/specialist mix/elites was so far the closest to ‘rock falls, everyone dies’ I’ve experienced in darktide that wasn’t an outright glitch. I’m actually not sure it isn’t a glitch.
As an aside, the captain or the twins having AoE heals is outright unfun in general.
I have same experience. Its more frequently happens on 35+ havoc and our premade concludes that this is some sort of coordination dps check.
Its hard to adapt to this sort of situations but if i may tell u - take 2 zealots with books (dmg and resist), 1 ogryn with provocation and ogryn nade (nuclear one), psyker bubble inferno.
That setup can solve ANYTHING.
And we notice, unlike first two weeks - now game heavily punishes u for not going forward.
So in ideal your teem needs to be some sort of death ball that rolls through the level.
If i may add another one:
Im not defending how havoc works now, there are plenty situations that cannot be solved due to bugginess nature of some sort of things like:
Buggy ritual triggering on vigil oblivion in MILES AWAY past the bridge.
Buggy ritual triggering on relay station also triggerin miles away past the drop past energy cell sequence
Ability to spawn rituals in same spot that already have normal daemonhost
Bulwarks wall spawns in front of u when u just progressing normally, but need to do a bridge anclavum baross event (game desides that u roll back for cell and try to punish u)
Broken seeds, like only gunners/reapers seed. In some maps its like walk in the park (ascention riser), on some - insta death (relay station).
“Waves” of poxbusters.
Nets through the walls
And that sort of things
Also we have plenty of “broken abyses”
Like now hab dreyko is the easiest map because u can kill bosses stuck in spawn doors (on all map).
On dark communion ambush sequence right corner (where is enemy spawns, near the enter, not farest one) where u can kill all enemies by flamer before they even can walk.
they pretty much expect you to queue another until you dont get run ended by rng like that
the core issue is that the top players want a gamemode where they can actually lose, and given how absolutely powercreeped players are in this game this is the literal only way for 4 good players to lose
Literally was having this conversation tonight while playing. It’s particularly bad if you don’t have terrain to work with.
The best we’ve got as a counteract is taunt ogryn tries to pull as much away as possible while everyone else gets to work prioritizing things, but with that much stuff, and with heal captain, the odds feel close to zero. The amount of health you need to deal with is just insane.
You’re sure this still works? Last time some genius zealot tried this we got buried in bosses
(best thing was how he revived the exec stance vet of all people, who got bonked immediately and typed “wtf am I supposed to do” )
And if it still works, it’s bad and should not work.
I mean i was playing on comms plex the other day and we walked up to what we thought was a single hex bound host to then quickly see the other bar pop up which was apparently on the complete opposite side of the area we were in. We then had a beast of nutgle spawn in with the other host bar rapidly filling. We then had a chaos spawn show up and even though we stopped the first host from spawning the second one spawned in. Mind you i was playing with a gun psyker with with a bubble and a tac axe who was like some malice noob who had no damage in my game who was basically throwing at the ready up screen. Ive just given up on havoc and gone back to the auric board cuz i got sick of losing havoc runs either at the ready up screen or due to spawns and boss seeds or whatever goes in these havoc games. Not worth my time to try to climb back to havoc 40 and playing with randoms is a nightmare. Boggles my mind that horrible players are still somehow getting carried through havocs I guess by friends or something and then they end up in your game. I lose runs with way too many people who seem like heresy players to ever care about havoc. Ill stick to hi shock runs just for my sanitys sake.
I feel an alternative approach would be to have non-assassination captains and Lts not have regenerating shields. Or remove the Damage-Based Regen, at least. It would reduce the TTK considerably and allow you to better deal with multiple such threats.
And of course not have real Daemonhosts spawn adjacent to rituals. That we can all agree. Lost too many good men to that. Rituals + Lights Out is a real cheeky jerk. Ye don’t even have to do fewer DHs, just move them to a later spawnpoint.
My personal solution has been to pack more Boss Damage into my kit as I’m able. Since that’s the real threat in this current season. I am always relieved to have a Thunder Hammer zealot on my team just for these situations.
I also had ritual demonhost and right next to it, like 3-4 meters away was regular one, who we couldn’t see, we survived because it was low level havoc, but on high i am sure it’s a total crap.
Captains shouldn’t have healing aura at all. UPD: Also fix damned demonhost from rituals it constantly goes part underground, it’s not just mine game, i watched streams, other people also have same expirience, because it goes underground it’s harder to hit and i think in ignore some things that should stagger it.
Just make a specific Specialist that heals friendly units.
Scab Psyker, there ya go.
Heals enemies and protects enemies within proximity from all kinetic ranged damage with Telekine Bubble shield. It has a weakened Assail attack with damage comperable to a Scab Shooter.
Exceptionally vulnerable to melee attacks, has the health of a Trapper.
Zealot Dash, Ogryn Bull Charge, Psyker Brain Burst would be surefire ways to counter it.
Now that it’s a Specialist there could be a specific sound cue that alerts players to it’s presence.
I would say not scab and not specialist, but a melee elite, we need one more dreg melee enemies.
Game has seeding system, it chooses at the start what types of enemies will be prevalent, ranged or melee, scab or dregs and i noticed that whenever it is dreg enemies, it will always be million gunners and ragers, because dregs don’t have something like crusher and mauler, their only melee is trash enemies and ragers, so game always chooses to spawn gunners. I don’t count muties as melee because they present as specialists always.
If it’s a scab faction, even if most enemies are ranged, there’s always will be some heavy melee scabs.
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